A First Look at IE 7

Microsoft has recently released Beta 1 of Internet Explorer 7 together with Windows Vista Beta 1. Note that Beta 1 of IE 7 comes in two flavors:

A stand-alone version for Windows XP SP2

A built-in version for Windows Vista Beta 1

In this article, I will take you through the numerous new features and enhancements in IE 7. I will be basing my findings on the built-in version of IE 7 in Windows Vista Beta 1.

Improved Navigation

The first noticeable feature of IE 7 is its cleaner toolbar. Instead of having a separate list of "previous" and "next" pages for the Back and Forward buttons, it now combines the various recently viewed pages into a single list (see Figure 1). This makes navigating between pages much more logical and at the same time reduces clutter on the toolbar.

Figure 1. Improved page navigations in IE 7

Also, the Stop and Refresh buttons are now combined into one and displayed next to the Address bar (see Figures 2 and 3).

Figure 2. The Refresh button

Figure 3. The Stop button

Tabbed Browsing

IE 7 includes one of the most sought-after features in web browsers: tabbed browsing. Tabbed browsing allows you to view several web pages in a single window. To view a link in a new tab, right-click on the hyperlink and select Open Link in New Tab (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Opening a link in a new tab

You can also create a new tab by clicking on the New Tab tab (see Figure 5). The icon for New Tab is not indicative of what it does, but I think it will have a more intuitive look in the next beta.

Figure 5. Using tabs in IE 7

You can also close a tab by right-clicking on it (see Figure 6) and selecting either Close (to close the current active tab) or Close Other Tabs (to close all tabs other than the currently active one).